Young Priests vs. Young Laity: A Catholic Collision Course?

This semester is winding down way too quickly. My head is spinning with how fast final exams are approaching, as well as summer. Unfortunately, I seem to have caught a sinus infection, but God willing it will be gone soon. Anyway, I thought I’d take some time to reflect on a topic near and dear to my heart: the future of the Roman Catholic Church.

A recently deceased sociology professor named Dear R. Hoge co-authored several great books, two of which were Young Adult Catholics: Religion in the Culture of Choice and the other book was Evolving Visions of the Priesthood: Changes from Vatican II to the Turn of the New Century. The latter discussed the changes in Catholic priests over the past few decades. The former was a detailed study of young American Catholics in my age bracket (18-30 years old), and predictably found that younger American Catholics are much more supportive of women’s ordination, married priests, birth control, LGBT rights, etc. But there’s also a curious trend among the clergy. In the first book mentioned, Professor Hoge shows us that among the same age bracket of American clergymen, support for the aforementioned issues is markedly less than the Vatican II generation of priests (i.e. those our parents’ ages). To put it in a very simplistic way, young American Catholics are getting more socially liberal but young American Catholic priests are getting more socially conservative.

Sounds bizarre doesn’t it? How could regular young Catholics be moving to the left on these issues (Professor Hoge studied their thoughts on hot-button issues like LGBT rights) but young Catholic priests in the same generation be moving to the right? More importantly, what does this say about the future of the Catholic Church in America?

Well, the answer to the first question is actually MUCH more complicated than it seems. First, Professor Hoge reported that the conservative trend in the younger American clergy is actually more pronounced in diocesan priests, and not so much in religious priests. For those who don’t know the difference, google it to get the details, but to keep it short, diocesan priests are the ones attached to a particular parish. They tend to be more answerable to Rome anyway since their bishops are appointed by the Vatican, and we all know that the Vatican isn’t in a particularly liberal mood lately. But as for religious priests, these are attached more to a specific group of priests, each with their own distinct values and cultures. There are the Franciscans (most notably the Order of Friars Minor), the Dominicans (a.k.a. the Order of Preachers), the Jesuits and many others. While some Catholic religious orders are indeed right-wing and wouldn’t question anything from the Vatican, others are definitely not, and they are able to cultivate a more open-minded ethic among their priesthood candidates since they aren’t as directly answerable to Rome (they have their own leadership; it’s complicated, just take my word for it). Plus those religious priests tend to emphasize pastoral care and flexibility with real people on the ground since a lot of them deal with social justice issues like AIDS, etc., and not merely the rigid application of strict moral codes. Plus, some of them are able to be in other professions at the same time (such as college professors) which allow them greater academic freedom. So it’s important to get that distinction under one’s belt when talking about young clergy. As to why this trend is happening in young diocesan American clergymen, Professor Hoge isn’t as certain. But in my mind it’s really not unexpected at all. As the Vatican shifted to the right after the election of Pope John Paul II, things in the church got a lot stricter in general. Theological and pastoral freedom was suppressed (look up Fr. Charles Curran and Sr. Jeannine Grammick) to a much greater extent than it was in the 1960s, when we had the more open papacy of Pope John XXIII. Given the fact that the Vatican now tolerates little dissent (although Pope Benedict XVI hasn’t been nearly as bad as many thought he would be), why would a population of young, more open-minded American Catholics be producing a generation of rigid, Rome-is-never-wrong priests? Well, think about it. What type of person from my age group would be inclined to join an increasingly right-wing Vatican hierarchy (and I exclude religious priests from this)? The answer is the comparatively few young Americans my age who aren’t as liberal and open-minded. I never said that all American Catholics my age were more open-minded and liberal on hot-button issues, only that a majority were, according to Professor Hoge. That might explain in small part why the priesthood in America has been in trouble (although there are many other factors as well). They may be fewer, but they’re there and joining the priesthood, and the Vatican’s hierarchical dogmatism fits quite well with their thought patterns about order and authority, and it provides them with something strong to hold onto in a time in history when things are very chaotic. Old beliefs are being increasingly questioned by my Millennial generation, and the sex abuse scandal did little to help the Church’s credibility, which was already damaged in the West after the infamous Humanae Vitae encyclical in 1968 that reaffirmed a ban on all forms of artificial birth control (I think that Pope Paul VI, the pope who put forth the controversial encyclical, had good intentions but didn’t fully understand the implications of his encyclical, especially since he died before the AIDS epidemic surfaced). In fact, not even couples with AIDS can use condoms under the official doctrine. This doesn’t sit well with most young Catholics in America nowadays, so logically the only ones who would join the priesthood are the minority that held those views to begin with. Vatican II probably had a liberalizing effect on diocesan priests who were already there to begin with, but there is no such liberalizing council today. Luckily religious priests have had their own internal support systems, but diocesan priests were at the mercy of whoever Rome appointed as their bishop, and Pope John Paul II made sure to stock America with plenty of conservative bishops (with some exceptions). This probably helped to weed out more liberal diocesan priests over time and ensure that only the most “orthodox” priests would be ordained.

Before he died, Professor Hoge predicted that there will be problems down the road for the Church in America due to the differences between young Catholic laypeople and young Catholic priests. He’s probably right, but I don’t think it will be so much a collision rather than a divergence. Some right-wing Catholics gloat over the fact that a lot of Catholic reform groups (such as Voice of the Faithful, Call to Action, etc.) have aging members and not a lot of young blood, but that’s not because young Catholics are getting more conservative, as Professor Hoge demonstrated. It’s because we’re not trying to change the Vatican or our priests. We just don’t care anymore! Or, unfortunately, we just stop going to Mass and drift off to another denomination or our own self-directed spiritualism/theism. Those young Catholics like me who stay just shrug their shoulders and go on with life when they hear a conservative priest pontificating about the evils of birth control or homosexuality. No, we’re not a generation of rebels protesting outside of the rectory or the local bishop’s office. We’ll hear what the priest has to say, and then make up our own minds (hopefully with well-formed and educated consciences). It won’t be so much a loud conflict, but rather a sort of quiet internal dissonance where the reality in the pews will be even more different from the reality at the altar than it already is. Perhaps a failing marriage will serve as a good analogy as to what the American Catholic church may end up looking like if diocesan priests continue this trend into the future. There may not really be a divorce between the pews and the rectories, at least not for the foreseeable future, but the two certainly won’t be sleeping together. And I think that, eventually, it will be the diocesan priests who will be sleeping on the couch!

I myself have feared that by the time I get older that there will only be rigid, anti-gay priests left as the Vatican II generation retires, and I have no intention of leaving the Catholic Church (think about the name of this blog!). But I’m not so sure that I need to be afraid of that anymore. First, other priests have assured me that there will always be somewhere accepting for me to go. It may be hard to see it now, but I trust these particular priests when they tell me this, and my heart tells me the same. My fellow Millennial Catholics will probably be, as they have been, an invaluable source of support in the days ahead, and places like The Wild Reed and Dignity USA will always be there. Second, I think I’ve sometimes placed too much stock in what a priest has to say, and I’m not the only one who’s done this. It’s not so much about the priest or the parish environment. If I don’t like what a priest says in his sermons or his attitudes, I’ll just do what I already did and go to another Catholic parish. It really comes down to me and God. I think He loves and accepts me as a gay man. As to whether He wants me (or indeed all gay people) to be celibate, or to pursue a loving, monogamous relationship, I don’t know yet. I’ll keep my mind open. It may be that I’ll be a very different person in 10 years, and the Church may also change. One never knows which way the Holy Spirit will lead us. But the most important thing is that I am here. I’m here in the Church, and I am not afraid to say that I deeply respect the pope but don’t agree with him on issues of birth control, sexuality and women’s ordination. I believe in the one Holy Catholic Church, but not its Vatican hierarchy that excludes women and other qualified individuals who have different opinions. The Holy Catholic Church is more than the Vatican. It’s all Catholics, whether conservative or liberal, gay or straight, black or white, old or young, man or woman. And at the core is Jesus, smiling right back at us. Jesus is the rock that we must cling to, not a legalistic, fear-based hierarchy.

May God bless you all.

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